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The number of cuts — 289 in total — were deeper than expected, with 172 of them coming from the editorial side and 117 from the business side, a company spokeswoman said. The moves were announced at each magazine individually yesterday.
Time magazine is losing close to 50 people and is shutting its bureaus in Los Angeles, Chicago and Atlanta. It plans to keep three “laptop” correspondents in Los Angeles who will work directly with editors in New York. Seven jobs will be cut in the magazine’s Washington bureau, including four correspondents. Sports Illustrated is losing about 30 people.
People, perhaps the most successful magazine in history, is laying off about 44 editorial workers, though it is also creating seven new correspondent jobs around the country for a net loss around 37. It is shutting its bureaus in Washington, Miami, Chicago and Austin, Tex.
Like other publishing companies, Time Inc., the nation’s biggest magazine publisher and a unit of Time Warner, is trying to cope with the movement of readers and advertisers from print to the Web. The company, which has a profit margin around 18 percent, is streamlining its publications to bolster its presence online, especially sites associated with its marquee magazines.
Employees at People’s soon-to-be-shut bureaus said they felt shell-shocked yesterday as Larry Hackett, People’s managing editor, delivered the news by speakerphone from the magazine’s New York offices. The four bureaus have about 20 people combined.
Mr. Hackett told employees that the cuts were “brought upon us by some real cold hard facts when it comes to how this business is run, and how media is changing.” He said that he regretted the cuts, but that they were necessary for “the health of the magazine” as the company addresses the “needs of the Web site, specials and other technologies that will be emerging.”
Ann S. Moore, Time Inc.’s chief executive, said in a statement that many company Web sites had “matured into strong and popular brand vehicles while others are relaunching new designs with fresher content.”
But, she added, “We need to continue to evolve to meet the cost pressures and challenges presented by our rapidly shifting industry.” The layoffs, she said, “are part of a restructuring necessary to sustain our progress.”
People magazine’s investments in its Web site, for example, appear to be paying off. After the Golden Globe awards this week, people.com broke its own record for traffic in a single 24-hour period, with 39.6 million page views. Its previous record was for Tom Cruise’s wedding in November, with 28.3 million page views.
The 172 editorial job losses account for more than 5 percent of Time Inc.’s 3,300 editorial employees worldwide; the total 289 losses account for about 2.6 percent of the company’s 11,300-member staff.
Time Inc. is also selling 18 of its smaller niche magazines, including Field & Stream and Parenting, which employ 530 people. When those transactions are completed, the company’s total work force will drop to about 10,500. It cut about 600 people last year.
John Huey, editor in chief of Time Inc., said in a memo that the cuts were being made to help “move quickly into a future of flexible, multiplatform content.”
The company is “changing much of what we do and how we do it,” Mr. Huey said, adding that the cuts did not mean the company would sacrifice journalistic integrity “or that we are getting out of the print business.”
Of the 172 editorial employees to be let go, 86 nonunion workers are being dismissed outright, effective Feb. 1. The identities of the other 86, who are in positions covered by the Newspaper Guild, is not yet certain, and the numbers remain somewhat fluid.
The company is asking for volunteers to resign, seeking 23 from Sports Illustrated, 24 from People and 31 from Time and others elsewhere (the numbers do not add up to 86, giving the company some flexibility in who leaves). Volunteers have two weeks to come forward.
Employees said yesterday that many of their colleagues were now inquiring about how much they would be paid if they left and were considering their options. If volunteer resignations fall short, Time Inc. can then dismiss enough people to reach its goals.
In her statement, Ms. Moore said, “I know this is a difficult time for all of us — it’s never easy to see talented colleagues leave.” She said the company had “enormous potential for innovation and growth.”
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The network, which supersized the program from two to three hours in 2000, knows that it risks diluting the “Today” brand through yet another expansion. But it is banking, instead, on the “Today” name serving as a lure to women, in particular, who watch television midmorning, said an NBC Universal television executive who was briefed directly on the “Today” plan but who would only discuss it anonymously before today’s announcement.
The ratings on the third hour of “Today” have fallen during each of the last three years, with the 3.8 million viewers it has drawn each morning, on average, so far this television season representing a drop of 6 percent from the same point in the 2005-6 season and 9 percent since 2004-5, according to Nielsen Media Research. Similarly, ratings for the first two hours of “Today” were down this fall, when compared with the program’s performance a year earlier — including that among women — though its chief competitor, “Good Morning America” on ABC, has also lost ground.
Though “Today,” which begins at 7 a.m., would become the first television program in recent memory — if ever — to command four hours each weekday on a major broadcast network, the move is not necessarily revolutionary: the fourth hour of “Today” is expected to look much as the third does now, in terms of its focus (home, cooking, health and fashion) and its talent lineup.
Its primary hosts will be Ann Curry, the news reader on the first two hours of “Today,” and Al Roker, the program’s weatherman, as well as Natalie Morales, who typically joins them in leading the third hour. (While NBC’s weighing of a fourth hour of “Today” has been widely reported in recent months, Variety reported online on Sunday that the announcement was expected today, at a gathering of television critics in Pasadena, Calif.)
For now, at least, NBC is not expected to hire any new hosts for the program, though it does anticipate giving at least occasional airtime in the fourth hour to up-and-coming stars like David Gregory (who covers the White House for NBC News); Lester Holt and Campbell Brown (co-hosts of “Weekend Today”); Hoda Kotb (a correspondent for NBC’s “Dateline”); and María Celeste Arrarás (an anchor on Telemundo, the Spanish-language television channel, which NBC owns).
When Mr. Lauer typically appears on the third hour of “Today,” it is usually to welcome the audience to the program, before he slips off. It has not been decided whether he would play a similar role, at times, in the fourth hour, the NBC Universal executive said.
Ms. Vieira is a different story: because she also appears as the host of the syndicated game show “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire,” she is prohibited, contractually, from appearing regularly in the third and fourth hours of “Today”; that poses a conflict because “Today” is already directly opposite “Millionaire” in some markets. (Both hosts, though, often remain in the “Today” studios in Manhattan to appear live for the program’s first half-hour in West Coast markets, beginning at 10 a.m. Eastern time.)
It remains to be seen how many NBC affiliates — beyond the 10 owned by the network — would broadcast a fourth hour of “Today.” But the decision by NBC to add the hour would seem to have its most immediate effect on “Martha,” Martha Stewart’s daytime talk show, which is now at 10 a.m. on NBC-owned stations in New York and Los Angeles. (Those stations have renewed the show for next season.)
Executives in NBC’s domestic television unit, which syndicates “Martha,” and Mark Burnett, who produces it, did not immediately respond to telephone and e-mail messages yesterday seeking to ask where it might be moved on the schedule next season. For years “Today” has been widely described as the most profitable program on television, with profits last year estimated at about $250 million.
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